Summary of what I’ve been reading, or, 3-9/50

I simply cannot be arsed to make individual posts for the books I haven’t written about yet, so here are the summaries of them.

Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives by Thomas French. I love animals and reading about them, so I was really keen on reading this book. I was not disappointed, because it was a good look into the life of the animals as well as the people who work in a zoo. I found myself crying for animals and people I’d never met and furious for the zookeepers who only wanted the best for the animals but got the short end of the stick. The book is based on a series of articles, and I found it quite exciting to see pictures of the animals after reading about them in the book. My rating: 5/5

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. I wanted to read this book because I really like magical realism, which you may have already noticed, but I ended up being a bit disappointed. Before reading it I knew it was going to be similar to Garden Spells, but I have to say I much prefer the latter. I just did not like any of the characters in Practical Magic and I was constantly thrown off by Hoffman’s descriptions of sexual encounters and the usage of the word “fucking”. I generally don’t mind either of those things and I have no problem with swearing, but somehow her language in these contexts differed so much from the rest of the book that it just seemed glued-on. Blech. My rating: 2/5

Where We Going, Daddy? Life With Two Sons Unlike Any Other by Jean-Louis Fournier. This was an extremely quick read that I finished between my morning coffee in the living room and finally transporting my butt to the computer room. (Yes, we have a separate computer room, what about it?) It was an interesting peek into a life with disabled children and it was far less heavy than The Boy in the Moon that I read last year. Funny and touching. My rating: 4/5

Secrets of the Cat by Barbara Holland. Cats, I love them. I have three of them. CATS. So obviously I was excited about this book and I did love learning new things about my furry friends and reading fascinating anecdotes. However, some parts were kind of boring and I probably should have skipped all the parts about burning cats alive. My rating: 4/5

Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing by Alan Paul. I’ve been pretty interested in China recently and it was interesting to read about it through a foreigner’s eyes too. I wasn’t quite as much interested in the music stuff but I didn’t find it boring either. I don’t really have a lot to say about this book, it was a nice read but I don’t think I’ll read it again. My rating: 3/5

A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French. I love Dawn French so I was pretty excited about reading this book and I definitely wasn’t disappointed. I would recommend reading this book to anyone who has or is about to have teenaged children. Some commenter on Goodreads complained that the characters were totally stereotypical, but I felt that the story showed the real people behind the stereotypes. I liked the story as well and I’m looking forward to reading Dawn’s newer book too. My rating: 4/5

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. I guess I should have figured it out by the book’s title that this book was mostly going to be about, well, books. It’s not that I have anything against reading about literature but I just wasn’t in the mood for it and I hadn’t read any of the books discussed except Lolita. However, I learned a lot about Iran’s history and what it’s like to live there, which was a valuable lesson. My rating: 3/5

2013

The reason I haven’t been updating for two months is that I’ve had pretty shitty year this far and I haven’t had enough brain cells to spare to concentrate on blogging. All of my three readers: sorry about that.

During the past two months I have also noticed that I don’t particularly enjoy the reading race that I set for myself, especially since my daily life is already full of deadlines as it is. Also sometimes I just want to dwell in a book as long as possible, and being a fast reader with a reading schedule that just hasn’t been possible. Instead of scrapping my project completely, I decided I’m only going to attempt to read 50 books this year. It’s not that I can’t read more, I just don’t want to. So currently I’m only two books behind, woohoo! I will now attempt to update the blog more often, though I don’t think school is making the situation any better until June. But we’ll see!

Kindle Clippings VI

If I could have my life over again, I’d say to the King of the Underworld, in my last life I was a lantern-maker, can I please apply to be a lantern-maker in my next life on earth? Why? Because I think lanterns are beautiful! Just look at them, they’re all the work of our own hands, the water lily standing gracefully erect, the bunny all cute and lively, the spirit of that dragon! I feel so good, looking at those lanterns . . .

China Witness by Xinran

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My Kindle clippings are whatever awesome things I’ve decided to highlight while reading. Some more profound, some just silly.

2/80 – China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation

Not only am I hidiously behind in my reading but I’m also behind in writing about reading. Fortunately things are getting better now – my horrific clinicals are over so I actually have time to do stuff I like although I still am suffering from stupidshoulderitis.

 

So this wasn’t the first book by Xinran that I’ve read as I read Good Women of China last year. Somehow I found going through this book a lot harder than the other one and I don’t quite know why. Both books were interesting, but I sometimes struggled reading China Witness and had to read my next book on some days to give my brain a rest. The reason I’ve been reading stuff about China recently is that because of the stupidshoulderitis I have trouble keeping up with my regular hobbies, so I decided to get a new hobby: learning Chinese and learning about China. For no reason, really. Sometimes I find it hard to read regular history books so reading about real people’s stories works perfectly for me. Instead of reading about wars and politics I’d rather hear how those things affect on people’s everyday lives, and China Witness is perfect for that purpose. However, I didn’t find myself as emotionally involved in the stories as I did while reading Good Women of China, which I guess was the reason I found reading so difficult. I still would recommend it for anyone interested in China, history or people in general.

My rating: 3½/5.

1/80 – You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News

 

Finished: January 3rd. Yes, it really took me this long to post this, you can blame stupid clinical placement that is sucking out my soul. I only finished another book yesterday, although I have been reading two other books at the same time so I’m not that late on schedule.

Anyway, I decided to start the year with a lighter read, so I picked up the book written by the people of Cracked.com. I don’t really have a lot to say about the book, as an experience it was pretty much the same as visiting the website. Read it if you like odd facts, though you might like it more if you’re American at it is almost too clearly directed to an American audience. Because, you know, they are the only people in the world who have access to the internet.

My rating: 3/5

80 books in 2013

2012 was the year I finally got back to regular reading. However, I would like to do better next year and spend a lot less time on the computer, so I decided to give myself a challenge: I must read at least 80 books next year.

Why 80? First I thought I could read a hundred books which would make about two books a week, but I realised that while I would be able to do that, I don’t think I’d really want to do that just yet. 1½ books a week sounded a lot better, which makes 78 books a year that I neatly rounded up to 80. If I do succeed in 2013, I guess I could try reading 100 books in 2014! I have already made a list of 60 books I’m planning to read (Two books are missing from that list for some reason.) and the remaining 20 can be decided later just to make it more exciting. The list consists of books from my to-read list on Goodreads, books I already have in digital form on my computer and books I know are in my local library. Some of the books are classics that people are supposedly supposed to read, but all the books have been chosen just because I feel like reading them in the near future.

Aaand I just realised Goodreads added all the books in the shelf into the read shelf as well. WHY? Then I tried deleting them from the read shelf, but they’re still showing there, unless I individually move them to to-read. I guess I’m just not cool enough for Goodreads logic.

Anyway, I will start reading tomorrow, and will be keeping the blog updated about my progress. Happy New Year, everyone! xx

Kindle Clippings V

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

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My Kindle clippings are whatever awesome things I’ve decided to highlight while reading. Some more profound, some just silly.